WASHINGTON -- The case of a U.S. citizen who says he was tortured in the United Arab Emirates as a terror suspect shows Washington's sway over foreign arrests, critics say.

Naji Hamdan, an American Muslim who had lived in Dubai since 2006, says he was arrested on unspecified charges of promoting terrorism last year and tortured into signing a confession after FBI agents from Los Angeles showed up in the UAE to question him, The Washington Post reported.

Now, Ahilan Arulanantham, an American Civil Liberties Union staff lawyer representing Hamdan, says in a habeus corpus petition filed in U.S. federal court that since the United States used its influence to have Hamdan arrested, it should also use its influence to free him.

"This is torture by proxy," Arulanantham told the Post.

The FBI said it does not ask other governments to arrest people on its behalf, but court papers show it also does not deny the involvement of any U.S. agency in Hamdan's UAE detention, the Post said.

The Hamdan case "bridges the practices of the past, and we hope we're in a new era, but this is a litmus test," Deborah Manning, an attorney for the human rights organization Alkarama, told the newspaper.